Publisher's Synopsis
As a child Jean-François Champollion had but one fervent wish - to travel to Egypt and solve the mystery of the ancient hieroglyphs. Finally, a brief lull in the Mediterranean war against the Ottoman Sultan offered his expedition a window of a few days in 1828 to disembark. Egypt proved a treacherous place, and not only because it was part of the Ottoman Empire. Champollion's secret diary entries vividly chronicle the dangers, his exhilarated enthusiasm for the subjugated country, and not least the remarkable discoveries that were to found the new science of Egyptology.
